But for Annie Siler Humrickhouse, the pain remains as sharp as the day it happened, so, please, bear with her as she struggles through the telling.

“If I’m not rational, you have to understand,” Humrickhouse said, her voice breaking almost from the start.

“I still grieve. He was my precious child.”

Of the story of her son and the circumstances that led to his death, Humrickhouse said, “It needs to be told. It needs to be revisited. His life did matter. Maybe this will save the life of another.”

Siler — his mother still refers to him as “Carl Junior” — was 25 when he died. He was a graduate of Williams High School and Appalachian State, where he double-majored in math and computer science.

At Williams, he’d been superb in the 440-yard run, qualifying for the state finals in Raleigh. He’d also been on the cross country team and was a fine pole vaulter. At Appalachian, Siler ran cross country. His love of sports was strong.

Coming out of high school, Siler had been offered a partial scholarship to attend Wake Forest University to run cross country, but turned it down to go to Appalachian, where tuition was less expensive.

Carl Junior, Humrickhouse said, was more than an outstanding athlete — he was also a young man blessed with a brilliant mind.

“He always wanted to be an electrical engineer,” she said.

Siler also had a love of ham radio — a member of the Alamance Amateur Radio Club. Humrickhouse remembers that one year, during a 24-hour competition where ham radio operators see how many contacts they can make with others around the world, Siler led all of Alamance County. His accomplishment made it into the Times-News.

It was indicative, said Bob Price, a former president of the Alamance Amateur Radio Club, of Siler’s commitment to the hobby.

“He was quite interested in that,” Price said. “He was quite a participant.”

After graduating from Appalachian, Siler enrolled in the School of Electrical Engineering at N.C. State, where he tutored underclassmen. Humrickhouse said after her son’s death, she heard from people who said they would never have made it through college had it not been for the help of her son.

Humrickhouse said that when over the years she’s read of technological advances in places like Silicon Valley, Calif., she can’t help but wonder if her son would have been involved and made his mark on a national level.

“He would have been a contributor,” Humrickhouse said. “The world … it lost so much.”

SILER WASreturning to Burlington from Greensboro in the early hours of July 31, 1983. He was engaged to Jean Woodard, who lived in Boone.

Page 2 of 5 - The night he died, Siler was with Nancy Yearout. The two had been friends for years and had spent the previous evening together.

Denise Siler Murdock was Carl Junior’s sister, just a little more than 10 months older than her brother. Their birthdays were so close that for six weeks each year, they were the same age.

Murdock said she and the rest of her family thought highly of Yearout.

“Our thinking was this: Carl spent his last night out with his friend, Nancy … who he truly cared for,” Murdock wrote via Facebook.

There was no alcohol involved in the accident that claimed her son’s life. Humrickhouse said her son didn’t drink and, according to a story in the Times-News that followed the accident, there was no mention in a N.C. Highway Patrol report of alcohol being involved.

About 1:30 a.m. Siler was a passenger in a 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit driven by Yearout, who was 24. They were traveling north on Interstate 85 and had just crossed from Guilford County into Alamance County. The site is today close to the location of an interstate rest area, which was at the time under construction.

According to the Highway Patrol, Siler was killed when a horse that had escaped a nearby pasture wandered onto the interstate. It was actually the second horse out of the pasture, Humrickhouse said, the first having already crossed the highway.

The horse that killed her son, Humrickhouse said, was first hit by another vehicle. The force of the collision threw the horse into the Volkswagen, where Siler was a front-seat passenger. The crash all but ripped the top from the car.

Yearout, Humrickhouse said, was a small woman who sat low and survived the crash. But her son, Humrickhouse said, was 6 feet 5 and sat high enough to where he sustained severe head injuries.

“It was bad,” Trooper Gerald Wilburn of the N.C. Highway Patrol said in a story printed in the Times-News the day following the accident.

Humrickhouse and the father of her three children, Carl Siler Sr., had been divorced several years. She had remarried only 15 days before her son died. Humrickhouse and her husband were at the beach that night.

Her youngest son, Kenneth, seven years younger than Carl Junior, called to tell his mother that Carl was at Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro.

“He said, ‘Mom, you’d better come fast,’” Humrickhouse said.

She fainted dead away. Carl Junior was kept on life support only four hours. There was little doctors could do.

“The doctor was crying,” Humrickhouse said of the decision to take her son off life support. “Carl (Sr.) was crying.”

Of the individuals who owned the farm from which the horse escaped, Humrickhouse said, “I don’t hate the people. I hate what they did.”

Page 3 of 5 - She said the Highway Patrol told her and her ex-husband that the accident in which their son died marked the second time in a year horses had gotten loose from that particular farm. No serious injuries resulted from the previous escape.

“It’s incomprehensible,” Humrickhouse said of horses escaping twice in such a short period of time. “They were negligent. People don’t want to take responsibility for their negligence.”

LAWS PERTAININGto such accidents were vague in 1983 and little has apparently been done to change them. Thirty years ago, immediately following Siler’s death, there was debate among law enforcement officials as to whether the matter should be pursued by the Highway Patrol or Alamance County Animal Control.

Randy Jones, a spokesman for the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, said even today, anyone seeking justice in such a case would almost surely have to go through civil court for retribution.

“It’d have to be civil unless someone was trying to build a manslaughter case,” Jones said.

He noted deputies respond to calls throughout the year concerning livestock that have escaped from pens and pastures. Jones said such calls increase in the spring with the arrival of warm weather. Just a few weeks ago a deputy had to grab a stray horse around its neck in order to corral it.

Alamance County District Attorney Pat Nadolski said the toughest criminal violation the owner of such a horse might face is a charge of allowing livestock to run free. The offense is a misdemeanor.

THE DEATHof their son changed many things for Humrickhouse and others in her family. Humrickhouse was a popular educator, teaching at Turrentine Middle School for 15 years prior to the accident.

She took two years off to mourn her son.

“There’s not words,” Humrickhouse said. “I cried for two years.”

She said she keeps a handful of pictures of her son in the office of her home in Raleigh.

“I look at them and pretend it’s 30 years ago,” Humrickhouse said. “I pretend the accident never happened.”

She’s the grandmother now to six — Denise and Kenneth having three children each. But Humrickhouse said she’ll always wonder about the children her oldest son may have raised.

“I still wait for him to come in the door,” she said. “I see my other grandchildren and find myself wondering, ‘Where’s Carl’s?’”

Humrickhouse said she stayed in touch with Woodard, her son’s fiancée, for a period following his death. Woodard is a nurse now, Humrickhouse said, and eventually married a police officer.

But Humrickhouse said she had to finally stop calling.

“There comes a time the contacts cease,” she said. “You don’t need the memories.”

Page 4 of 5 - Chuck Crenshaw ran track with Siler at Williams, but admitted, “He was a lot more dedicated than me.”

Crenshaw said when they were in high school, it wasn’t unusual for Siler to find him at lunch, a stop watch in his hand. Instead of eating, Siler would go to the track behind the school and complete an 880-yard run — two full laps around the field.

He wanted Crenshaw along to time him.

“He was obsessed with breaking two minutes,” Crenshaw said. “And he did.”

Crenshaw said that for a period, Siler held school records in both the 440- and 880-yard runs. Crenshaw and Siler were two of the four members of the school’s mile-relay team.

“He was quite an athlete,” Crenshaw said. “And he was a good guy, too.”

Crenshaw said he still thinks of Siler often, especially when he’s traveling the interstate from Burlington to Greensboro or back — at the site of the accident.

“When one of your buddies dies, it sticks with you,” he said.

Henry Klaiber coached Siler on the cross country team at Williams and taught him advanced math. Siler was one of his best runners and a favorite student.

“Whatever he was involved with, he took very seriously and tried very hard to excel,” Klaiber said.

He said he remembers the cross country team at Williams winning its conference championship during both Siler’s junior and senior years. Siler was one of the primary reasons, Klaiber said.

“He was always one of the top finishers,” Klaiber said. “I still remember the day he died. It was a shock. It was a terrible waste of life.”

Humrickhouse eventually returned to teaching after getting an offer from Betty Bowman, who was principal at Broadview Middle School. Humrickhouse went back to teaching sixth-graders, a job she loved.

“Betty called and said, ‘I have a job for you,’” Humrickhouse said. “I needed to go back to work. I told my family, ‘If I don’t get my life together, I’ll be in a mental institution.’”

Humrickhouse said that as difficult as the accident was for her, it was equally devastating for her ex-husband – a well-known Burlington barber with a shop at Medical Village on Vaughn Road.

“It was hard on Carl,” Humrickhouse said.

She said her ex-husband drove the interstate often following the accident – pulling to the shoulder to study the fence around the pasture from which the horse that caused the accident escaped.

“Carl could see where the fence was in disrepair,” she said. “It was inexcusable.”

Carl Sr. died last August and was buried beside his son at Alamance Memorial Park. Humrickhouse said that prior to the death of her ex-husband, she hadn’t visited the cemetery in at least 20 years – the pain of looking at her son’s grave too much to bear.

Page 5 of 5 - She said attending the funeral of her ex-husband and seeing his grave marker beside her son’s was in a sense comforting.